Neil Lennon has insisted that he will not make any rash decisions regarding his international career in the aftermath of Northern Ireland's resounding 4-0 defeat by Norway on Wednesday night, during which he was abused by sections of the Windsor Park crowd.
His abusers were angry over Lennon's recent move to Celtic, a club with strong Catholic associations.
"I would prefer not to go through something like that again if possible," said the 29year-old midfielder afterwards, "(but) I hope to be back. I'll go back and talk things over with my club and my family and we'll take things from there."
Lennon has won 36 caps during his seven-year international career and is clearly one of the most talented players in Sammy McIlroy's squad. Due to an agreement between McIlroy and Lennon's club boss, Martin O'Neill, Lennon's participation was restricted to the first half of the game, but the former Leicester City player left the ground before the match had finished because of the way he had been treated.
Despite that, the Lurgan man did attempt to put a brave face on the incident, pointing out that a large number amongst the 7,500 crowd had also been strongly supportive of him. McIlroy, who can ill afford to lose the Celtic player's services for the forthcoming World Cup qualifier against the Czech Republic, insisted after Lennon's departure that the player had given no indication he would be retiring and added: "As far as I'm concerned he will be in the squad for the Czech Republic game."
Indeed McIlroy, who said he had heard players receive worse abuse at other grounds, claimed he would pick the player "as long as I am manager of the team".
But yesterday, amid reports that Lennon's family's home in Northern Ireland had also been targeted prior to Wednesday's game, there were calls from within the association itself for the IFA to identify and ban from future games those responsible for the sectarian abuse.
IFA community relations officer Michael Boyd said he would be calling for action, saying: "The time has come for the IFA to send out a strong message that this sort of behaviour cannot be tolerated. Banning these people is what the majority of decent supporters want."
Association president Jim Boyce said that he was "totally shocked" by what had happened. "I have no time for bigotry in any walk of life, let alone football. I have no time for sectarianism and I totally oppose it, as I've always done.
"But what you had was a certain section of people with moronic brains who did boo while there were many more people in the 7,500 crowd who supported Neil - it's important not to forget that."
Lennon himself acknowledged the point, insisting: "I thought a lot of people got behind me, I was very touched by the support." However, he added: "The build-up was difficult and it's bad enough trying to prepare yourself for an international match without the baggage that I've had over the last few days." Speaking yesterday, he said: "I want to talk this over with my family and manager (Martin O'Neill) before I make any comment."
